单细胞转录组测序的方法原理及应用

Principle and application of single cell transcriptome analysis

常规的转录组分析方法通常需要103个细胞,所以无法揭示单个细胞之间基因表达的异质性,也难以对诸如早期胚胎及异质性的组织干细胞和肿瘤干细胞等极少量细胞进行分析,而单细胞转录组测序技术的出现为此提供了有效的研究工具。单细胞转录组测序技术是在单细胞水平对全转录组进行扩增与测序的一项新技术。本文主要就单细胞转录组测序技术的操作方法、应用成果以及进展作一综述。

The conventional transcriptome analysis requires minimally 103 cells, which makes it hard to identify the heterogeneity of gene expression among individual cells, or difficult to evaluate the specimens with very limited number of cells, such as early embryos, heterogeneous tissue specific stem cells and tumor stem cells. However, the emerging of single cell transcriptome analysis provides an efficient tool to achieve such research purposes. The single cell transcriptome sequencing technique is a new strategy to amplify and sequence the whole transcriptome in single cell. In this article, we review the development, relevant operating procedures, and applications of single cell transcriptome sequencing technique.